|
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
Low is not slow Good handling, qualifying the key at Homestead
Getting to the end has been kind of tough the past couple of months but Sunday’s race at Phoenix is another example of what this Mobil 1 Taurus team can do when it does get to the end. Even with a fuel line problem and even with our crew chief, Peter Sospenzo, out, we were able to come home with a second-place finish Sunday at Phoenix. It’s another one of those races we felt we could have won, should have won. But we’ve finished second in two of the last four races now and, with two races left to go, think we have a real shot at winning before the year is out. We ought to give the word “adversity” a spot on the car nearly as big as Mobil 1's. It’s been with us all year. Every time things look like they are going great, something bad seems to happen. When things are going bad, though, something good comes out of it. Sunday was a prime example. We’ve led most of the race and we’re the car to beat, coming from 25th to the lead. Then we run out of gas coming down pit road -- we found out later that a fuel line clogged. We lose a lap and it seems like everything is over. But we keep fighting and keep fighting, we get our lap back, come back from 30th and finish second. The way I look at it, we didn’t lose the race -- we ran out of race. Another 10 laps, and we would have won the thing. So we go on to the next -- and the last -- two races of the season, Homestead and Atlanta. We’re heading into them planning on winning them both. Believe me, we’re going to do everything we can to do just that. Homestead has kind of developed into a typical big, fast, flat track. I know it’s kind of strange to say a track ‘developed’ into something but you have to remember that they changed the layout of the place a few years ago. That change in the layout changed the racing some, it certainly changed the line around the place and it made it a little bit easier to get around. There are people who argue with you and say any track ought to be really tough to get around, and you can see their point a little bit. But a track that is easier to get around usually makes for better racing. Since they made that change at Homestead, the racing has gotten better. That first Busch race there a few years ago, a lot of guys were wrecking hard. They were trying to cut the corners off and, by doing that, your line was more like a square than a turn. Besides the fact that doing that really loads up the tires, it really causes a problem if you lose it. The car wants to snap around, and that was what was happening. Cars were backing into the wall and hitting hard, so hard that some of them were catching on fire. When they redesigned those turns, it changed everything. Your entrance into one and three were different, which made your exit from two and four different. Cars still wreck and cars still get squirrelly up there but now when they do that, you have a chance of getting through the problems. A car turning sideways now doesn’t automatically slam the wall. A car spinning now doesn’t automatically have his day end. You can still have all of that, sure, but you have a chance of surviving a problem in the corners now. Like any flat track, speed at Homestead comes from being able to get back into the gas quicker than anybody else in the turns. You have to have plenty of motor going down the straights but a good-handling car -- a really good-handling car -- can pick up a lot of speed for you. If I’m getting back into the gas just a few feet sooner than you are and I’m doing that four times a lap, I’m going to be way in front of you by the time we run the first 100 laps. That’s what you’re shooting for in your setup. You want that thing to handle low and hard through the corners, figuring you can pick up a lot on people. Then you add in a top motor program, like the one we have with Larry Wallace, and all of the sudden, you are the guy to beat. You are the guy to beat in the race and you are definitely the guy to beat in qualifying. Your qualifying lap, you run it harder than a typical racing lap. But you’re just trying to get around the track one time. That’s it. You don’t worry about saving your tires or your engine or your backside -- you just worry about getting around as fast as you can. That means honking down the straights, letting up at the last possible second going into (turns) one and three, and getting back into the gas as quick as you can in (turns) two and four. Homestead is a track position kind of track, so qualifying is a big deal there. You need to start up front. There aren’t any guarantees that come from starting up front. But there are some that come from starting in the back -- the main one being it’s going to be really hard to get up to the front. Track position stays in your mind all day long. You think about it on the track, trying to pass someone, trying to pick up just one position here and one position there. You think about it in the pits, whether or not it’s worth the risk of “two-tiring” or how hard your guys run hoping to pick up a position or two with a really good pit stop. Because of all of that, Homestead is a tough track to win on. Whoever wins Sunday will have done a lot. We’re going to do whatever we can to get this Mobil 1 Taurus to victory lane. Jeremy Mayfield, a three-time winner in the Winston Cup Series, finished second in Sunday’s Dura Lube 500 at Phoenix. His column appears every Monday on CNNSI.com.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
